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Nymbl EMR Marketplace Launches in Las Vegas for O&P Sector

Nymbl Background

In a saturated software market like healthcare, we’ve found that startups face massive barriers to entry in healthcare-related products. With our client Nymbl, they experienced quite the opposite. Nymbl created a unique workflow and marketplace for the Orthotic and Prosthetic sector that is leaps and bounds above anyone in the O&P industry. Launched in Las Vegas this September, they have signed up over 150 practices with multiple locations. So how did a startup with little traction in a healthcare industry explode onto the scene with little marketing?

The Case

The answer lies in the profits, networks, research, and a little bit of necessary luck. There are many more factors in a successful launch, but these are some factors we felt we should share to help others in their endeavors.

Profits

Let’s start with profits. Nymbl found that very large healthcare systems weren’t interested in a market that hovers around 1.5 billion in total revenue (small by healthcare standards). These large health orgs spend 10-20 million to get a product to market and didn’t think it was worth their time to produce a tailored solution. The O&P market cap is much lower for software than other industries, but well worth it for a startup because it gives you leverage to enter into bigger markets once you establish your organization. Couple that with the lack of competition in the O&P software market. One player owns over 60% of the entire market. Think about that for a second. A company whose software has remained the exact same for 10 years has managed to coast without any competition because of the perceived lack of ROI from the big healthcare engines.

Networks

Another strategic move Nymbl made was forming a powerful and influential advisory board comprised of the top practitioners in the O&P industry. When you are a large organization, you can afford to spend millions in marketing dollars. However, we’ve found that forming strategic partnerships within industries usually gets you farther for less. Once they had the full support of their respected advisory board, it ended up bringing new sales into the funnel without the usual timeline required to build trust. These practitioners have vetted it themselves. Next time they see their friend and mention the software, it reduces that sales timeline funnel enormously.

Research

When developing products for clients, we always dive into their use case before agreeing to a project. Many companies build products for a “need”, something they deem as a need, when in reality the end users don’t consider said product a vital “need”. After asking Nymbl for their business plans, they showed us their research received over the last 2 years, prior to partnering with VBI to develop their product. It showed a few things. Most importantly, they listened. They spent most of their time visiting small and large practices, sitting down with everyone from receptionists to practitioners, and capturing every single pain point they could find for the businesses. This is a crucial reason they had such an incredible reception to their product launch at AOPA in Las Vegas. Pain points resonated with those looking for anything to solve their problems. Pain points that affected their bottom line.

Luck

An important part of startup culture. Luck is real. Luck is important. And luck can be crucial. Nymbl had luck in different ways. First, their CEO had the luck of getting easy O&P feedback for research. He was in IT when asked by a client practitioner to find a good software solution because the main competitor wasn’t cutting it for his practice. Secondly, they had the good fortune of only dealing with 2 competitors, one of which was acquired by the main competitor. Rarely do you see such an open market for growth in a SaaS-saturated world. If you looked at the stats it would show a saturated market: 10 different O&P solutions. However, upon closer inspection they found that all were attempts by larger companies to provide some sort of module add-on for a quick buck, but not specifically developed for the Orthotics and Prosthetics market. While you can’t control luck, we believe companies can control the situations that allow them to capitalize when luck appears.

Conclusion

Every startup faces similar challenges taking a product to market. We felt it was necessary to show a winning scenario as a use case for others to learn from if applicable. While startups may have no control over factors such as luck, we feel they can position their company to execute properly when it comes their way. Good luck!